Polymers offer key advantages for the next generation of bio-chemical micro-devices. In particular, their bio-compatibility and compliance enable new types of devices that strongly couple chemical and mechanical behaviors. This coupling can be exploited to generate new types of devices that translate molecular phenomena into micro- or even macroscale phenomena. This translation is, in essence, a wonderful example of the productive marriage of physics and engineering. This talk will illustrate this marriage and resultant opportunities by describing chemo-mechanical interactions between molecular groups adsorbed onto compliant, freestanding films. The first part of the talk will outline a multiscale modeling framework that relates molecular characteristics (such as grafting density/distribution, pair potentials, etc.) to continuum variables, which can be used to guide device design. The second part of the talk will illustrate applications of the framework to micro-device design, including: (i) ultra-sensitive bio-molecular detectors, (ii) new approaches to quantifying intermolecular potentials and molecular configurations, and (iii) chemically-activated valves for microfluidic devices (i.e. Total Analysis Systems, or TAS). These applications will be used to highlight the opportunities created by the continued development of polymer microfabrication, including the triggering of microscale mechanical instabilities (i.e. buckling) by molecular binding events.